My View
We have reached the end of our wits and finally outsourced labor overseas. Nandini, a dear friend of Yumi and I, writes this from her home country of Singapore. That is why its late... time zones
They’re building a high rise by the river. Right in my view.
For most of high school, I used to stare out of my window and romanticize the view. My view. My parents' bedroom looks out to the skyline. But that belongs to everyone else as much as it does them. I’ve always had something softer and gentler. The lazy bend of the Singapore river, a sleepy mall, and the world’s largest dome. Beyond that, just a scattering of HDBs1.
I have a mind primed for nostalgia, so of course, when I was studying here 14, 16 or 18, I reminded myself how much this view would be mine for the rest of my life and history. Representative of the hours I spent at my desk as a teenager. The hours I spent studying here. Being here. Looking out to the world from here.
I remember coming back from school, spending hours listening to Stoned at the Nail Salon on repeat when I was 17, crying because Lorde said all the music I loved at 16 I would grow out of. Every year felt scarier. I felt closer to being stripped away from my home. A country. A continent. I did it willingly of course. I had to go to college in the US.
And of course, I was so excited. It really isn’t like me to think about everything being special and significant and precious. That’s my brother’s job. He keeps papers, cards, and drawings and I like to throw things away. Even when it hurts. I pride myself on my practicality.
After all, I’ve grown up in a nation that does the same. Lee Kuan Yew called us a nation built on pragmatism, not ideology. We remove historic cemeteries when we need to build new homes and trade national theatres for expressways. We do what makes sense. And we build an HDB outside my window right up against my view of the river so that I can remember that home is always going to change even when I’m not there and I can’t stop it and the East Coast Park2 might get reclaimed and then all the good things about my neighborhood would have disappeared and we would have this house I guess but I’m not sure if anyone will even still live in it?
Why do I bother feeling tied to this land; it’s half-sand anyway.
It is very hard to explain to my friends how America can feel so lonely sometimes. It is remarkable how much I can sound like you. But I feel like I have to think about the rules all the time. How you’re supposed to talk and smile and walk down the road. And then I come home, and I’ve forgotten how I’m supposed to do it here too. Why would being able to point out a piece of land and call it mine ever help me find a place in the world better?
There is nothing special about leaving home. Mostly everyone does it. Maybe it’s a bit harder from how far away I’m doing it, but I can’t really be sure. Mostly I wish I could bring all of my friends home and let them walk to the MRT with me so we both know what that feels like. Because when my friends talk about Seattle, Atlanta, or Lafayette, California they can think I think I know what they mean. But when I talk about Singapore I always think you don’t.
Tyler asks me if when he visits, it’s really going to be the upside down place I describe in my one line quips. I wonder what he will think of the million rules that have just constituted how the world works to me.
Singapore is tiny. It's nice to grow up knowing so easily the boundaries of your world. It is very hard to come back and feel all the tiny things change. Because it is so small that you notice all the things. And I kick myself when I don’t because how could I. Would I have noticed if I was really from here more. More than anything, I want to really be from here. I want my tongue to slip out of this half-accent it is caught in. I just want to sound like everybody else around. I want everyone to listen to me walk and talk and tell me I belong. And I hate that I have a passport that says I don’t. That I’m just a permanent resident at home stuck in a cycle of two-year renewals.
In the end, I want to be everywhere, but from somewhere.
***
One of my professors turned down a job at the New Yorker because he had promised his kids they would grow up in Ireland. He said those seemed like the more important promises to keep in your life. The ones you make to your children.
He told me I would always be stronger because I would always be outside America. Most people won’t even be able to see it, or know what that means, he tells me.
“It’s nice to be from a small country isn’t it?”
It is.
An HDB is the public housing most Singaporeans live in.
The East Coast Park (ECP) on a Sunday evening could be favourite place in the world
